Distraction
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: After the fall, Carolina is not alone. Spoilers for 13x11.


What hurts most are her fingers, bruised and broken after her desperate scrabbling slide along the sheer ice face. The persistent, agonizing ache of shattered bone is reassuring, a reminder that she'd done everything she could to slow her fall. It's also new, different, a counterpoint to the thrumming rhythm of memory.

After all, last time, she hadn't fallen. Last time, she'd been thrown.

She shifts her weight experimentally, feels the grind of broken ribs, the swollen ache of a compound fracture in her ankle. It's too much, too familiar, so she clenches her hands to feel the different, newer crackle and burn. Breathes into her dark helmet.

The helmet's different, too. Last time, after her hookshot had finally slipped from her weakened grip, she'd fallen with her face exposed. She'd watched the cold mist of her breath crystallize in the air. She'd seen her own blood in the snow. Now her dead armor weighs her down, the augmented scanners and HUD gone dark. She can see the stormy sky between the tree branches torn above her, but she can only see it through the physical gash of her visor against the broader darkness of her helmet, the outside world dull and muted and distant.

She doesn't think. For a very long time, she thinks of nothing at all beyond the quiet, gruesome game of clenching her splintered, bloody fingers, of distracting herself from familiar pain with the unfamiliar. Her breathing doesn't falter, slow and even. Her consciousness sharpens slowly, picking out details in the trees, her attention caught by a smear of blood or sap on an exposed branch.

Quietly, inevitably, she whispers, "Epsilon?"

She breathes longer, slower. Turns her head in the snow to count the splinters of branches and needles littering the ground around her. Runs out of things to count. Whispers, softer, "Church?"

Her armor is dead but not locked, not in recovery mode. Her healing unit is inactive. Her radio is inactive.

With an effort, she turns her head back to look up at the sky. Storm moving in. Storm already here, by the looks of it, wind and snow spraying like shattered glass over the tops of the trees. She wonders how long her armor's space-rated insulation will hold out against all the cracks and tears and dead machinery opening its guts to the elements. Remembers what it felt like to be moments from freezing to death, dragging herself back to the top of the cliff under cover of nightfall, finding her bloodied helmet in the hazy echo of Eta and Iota's screaming, stumbling off into the darkness.

"Yeah, maybe you don't wanna think about that right now."

The voice is somewhere else, external, but Carolina's pretty sure she's the one mouthing the words. There's someone standing over her, a shadow in the chaos of the storm, and sunlight pierces the stormclouds to glint briefly off black armor.

"Hey, kid," says Agent Texas. "Looks like you've got yourself into a bit of a mess."

Light-headed, Carolina feels the corners of her mouth dragging back into something caught between a snarl and a smile. "You," she says, squinting, trying to bring her into focus.

"Me," says Tex. "That's a matter of some debate, but whatever." She crouches down next to Carolina. "Wow. You're pretty fucked up."

"You're dead," Carolina says. "I mean, I think I— are you really here, or is it..." She trails off, coughing, clenches her fists until the grinding pain punches through the encroaching darkness.

"The second one," Tex says. "You're all fucked up and dying and you're hallucinating. Good job being original, by the way. Hallucinating the person you hated most before you die. Real sweet."

"Didn't hate you most," Carolina says, sullenly.

"Second-most, then," Tex says.

Carolina coughs a laugh, conceding the point. Turns her head to count the sticks and needles on the ground again. Same number. Turns her head back. Tex is still crouched over her, watching. "So are you gonna, I don't know, give me words of wisdom?"

Tex shrugs. "Guess I kinda missed my window there. You ever figure out who I was? I mean, who I wasn't?"

"Yeah," says Carolina. "I worked it out. Hacked some files while I was... plotting."

"You were scheming. Plotting looks different." Tex settles into the snow with her back to a tree. "Don't like thinking of me as just another victim, huh?"

"Not especially," Carolina says. "Still waiting on those words of wisdom."

Tex pulls off a glove and digs a bare finger into the snow; Carolina's own fingers twitch and twinge in sympathy. "Try not to die? I don't really know what you expect from me, here."

Carolina snorts. "You never were very good at knowing what I needed."

"And you've always been great at pretending you didn't need anything."

Silence, sullen and lingering. Carolina listens to her own breathing for a while. Bit of a crackle that wasn't there before. She coughs again, uneasily. "You're not a very inspirational hallucination."

"Okay. So whose fault is that?"

"Oh, fuck off."

Tex laughs, unexpectedly warm. She picks up snow in her ungloved hand. It doesn't melt in her grasp. "You've been hanging out too long with those sim trooper nerds if that's your idea of a comeback."

Carolina feels something tighten in her chest that has nothing to do with the broken ribs. "Maybe it's time," she says. "Maybe I got back to good in the end, after all. They can do it without me if they need to. Wash will—" She swallows. "Wash has had time to get used to the idea of being the last of us."

"You're running," Tex sing-songs. "You're always running, Carolina. Gotta go faster so nothing catches up with you. Gotta go so fast and so hard that you don't notice anything else, that you _can't_ notice anything else, that you can't be held responsible. You can't take the blame. You're a coward. Always have been."

Carolina settles her head back against the snow, closes her eyes for the first time. "And you're a hallucination."

"How convenient for you." Tex stands in one sharp motion. Carolina doesn't open her eyes, but she can hear the pacing, the crunch of snow at her side. "One hundred and ten stories, Carolina. You sprinted off the edge of that roof as it crumpled behind you, you flung yourself off, because you only go forward. You don't look back. You didn't notice what was happening. I don't think you ever really noticed. You thought Connie left because you weren't a good enough leader. You thought everyone started falling apart because you weren't there to keep them together."

"So am I a coward or an egotist?" Carolina says, mildly.

The footsteps sound muffled, like they're coming from far away. "Both," says Tex. "And you know what? You were right. You let them down because you weren't good enough, Carolina. You let us all down. You lost your team, you lost Eta and Iota, and now you lost Epsilon the same way—"

Carolina cracks one eye open. It takes more of an effort than she'd expected. "None of this is news to me, Tex. Believe it or not, I've had time to come to grips with the mistakes I've made, and that includes working out what I was and wasn't actually responsible for. What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?"

She can _hear_ Tex's smirk. "Trying to get you pissed off."

There's a flare of light next to Carolina's head, orange and glitching. She slams her eyes shut, jolts away from it, tries to force past the weight of her armor until her strength gives out and she falls back, coughing raggedly into her rebreather.

"Huh," says Tex. "Not exactly who I was going for, but that'll work."

When Carolina opens her eyes, Tex is gone and Sigma is hovering above her, hands behind his back. Her breathing, already loud inside her helmet, gets louder still. There's a high, raspy whine to it that she's trying very hard to stifle from becoming a scream.

"Hello, Agent Carolina," Sigma says. He flickers, sparks, solidifies. "Epsilon is failing. It has taken me some time to explore several more creative possibilities, but I have managed to reroute enough power to communicate with you."

"I don't want to hear this," Carolina says. She's cold, suddenly, shivering. "I don't want to speak to you."

"Epsilon tapped into your subconscious mind occasionally. I know that you've been having nightmares. But I should remind you that I am not the fragment of Alpha that was your A.I., that was complicit in your... fall. I am a fragment of Epsilon. I am not a threat to you. I too am failing."

"Real reassuring," Carolina says. Her teeth are chattering. She clenches her hands into fists, but the burn of pain is pushed back by the creeping numbness in her limbs. "Get my radio online. My fingers are broken. I can't help with the wiring."

"Your radio is intact," says Sigma. "I can reroute the power, but that will... end this interaction."

"Great," says Carolina. "Do it."

"Permanently," says Sigma. "Epsilon is failing. The burst of power required to activate your radio and a distress beacon on friendly frequencies will almost certainly destroy me."

"You refusing?"

A pause. "No," says Sigma.

Carolina watches him, and for a shaky moment she almost feels equal to the task of telling him that he was _her_ A.I., of telling him all that meant, all that still means. Instead, she says, "Do it," again, and Sigma goes dark.

Almost immediately, her radio crackles in her ear. She clenches her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. "This is Agent Carolina—" she begins, and is immediately inundated with a burst of noise from the other end. In the chaos, she picks out cheering, Tucker's exclamation of "holy _shit_ ", Wash's soft "oh thank god". Then Vanessa Kimball comes on the line and everyone else goes quiet.

"Carolina," she says. "We hadn't heard from you in hours. We assumed you were dead."

Carolina coughs. "Yeah," she says. "Near thing. I don't... I don't think I can move. You'll need to send someone to my position."

The relief in Kimball's voice gives way to concern. "You're injured? How badly?"

Carolina shivers, clenches her fists. She can't feel her hands. "You may have to hurry."

A crackle over the radio, and suddenly everything goes a whole lot quieter. For a moment, Carolina is terrified the connection has been dropped. Then she realizes that Kimball has switched the conversation to a private channel. "Help is on the way, Carolina. I'm supposed to keep you talking. What happened?"

Carolina manages a rough laugh. "Old ghosts just keep haunting me. Is everyone—?"

She trails off into the leading edge of Kimball's hesitation. Then Kimball says, "We found Doyle. Felix killed him and took the key. He's gone. We don't know where yet, but we have a lead."

Carolina closes her eyes. "No rest for the wicked, huh?"

"I... I can't say I was ever very close to Donald. He was infuriating and small-minded and fundamentally wrong on so many levels." Kimball's voice cracks a little, and Carolina wonders if she looks as shocky as she sounds. "But he was becoming an ally of sorts, and he... well, he tried, in the end. I'm sorry he died alone. And I'm sorry he died afraid."

"Let myself get distracted," Carolina says. "Shouldn't have... wouldn't have..."

"Hey, c'mon," says Kimball. "Stay with me. Get Epsilon to tell you a story or something."

"He's dead," Carolina says, dreamily. "I think he's dead. Don't know how I'm gonna face the others. Tucker and Caboose."

"It's war," says Kimball, without any particular emotion in her voice. "Not everyone makes it back."

"But I will face them," Carolina says. "I'll talk to them when I get back."

Kimball makes an obvious effort to inject cheerfulness into her voice. "By the sounds of it, you'll be sleeping for a week when you get back."

"After my nap, then," Carolina says, groggily. "S'important. And we should talk about Doyle. Can't run away anymore. Gotta know what my people are thinking. Gotta listen."

"Your people," Kimball says. There's a faint smile in her voice. "Pelican has confirmed visual on your location."

"Last time," Carolina murmurs, watching the running lights of the Pelican fade into view through the storm overhead, "I had to dig myself out of my own grave. That's another story I'll tell you sometime. After my nap."

Kimball is quiet for a moment, then says, "It's okay, Carolina. You're not alone this time."

The Pelican puts down just outside the copse of trees; she can hear the crunch of the snow and the brief roar of its engines. She breathes in, slowly, feels the familiar ache in her ribs. Doesn't clench her fists. No more distractions.

"Yeah," she says, as the footsteps get nearer. "Not alone."


End file.
